Scotland’s Parliament is a year old. Reports of its premature senility are greatly exaggerated

THESE days, Edinburgh has become a favourite destination for the academic traveller, particularly for political scientists anxious to discover how one of the world's oldest democracies' newest experiments, the Scottish Parliament, is faring. A casual reading of the Scottish media would suggest that there is much to be excited about—that the whole thing is in fact a complete disaster.

Apparently, the Scottish executive, the devolved Scottish government, is in uproar because ministers are fighting each other to succeed Donald Dewar, the first minister, who will be off work for three months because he needs a heart operation. His condition, no doubt, has been brought on by public outrage at the skyrocketing cost of a new building for the Parliament (£190m, perhaps more, and the architect is off sick too).

A columnist in the Scottish Sun fumes that the Parliament is “faceless, feckless, homeless, useless.” Mr Dewar, looking surprisingly fit and cheery when The Economist dropped by this week, disgustedly flung the offending column on the floor of his office. Patiently, he listed the political work ignored by the popular press: legislation modernising property ownership law, setting up national parks, dealing with the neglected rights of people incapacitated by illness and improving standards in schools is all under way. Already passed are laws opening up the way his administration spends taxpayers' money to the kind of public scrutiny that would make a Whitehall minister turn pale. An imaginative programme to deal with Scotland's appalling public housing is in train.

And actually, there is little real sign of public discontent with the Parliament. Opinion polls suggest that, if anything, voters are reserving judgment. Business organisations, which were the most hostile section of Scottish society to the idea of devolution, have been favourably impressed by the government's openness.

Nor does the Parliament yet show signs of being the fast track to independence which some forecast and many in the Scottish National Party (SNP) hoped for. In March, the Conservatives won the first parliamentary by-election, in previously Labour-held Ayr. Indeed Alex Salmond, the SNP leader, has moderated his party's stance on independence, which would now be the subject of a referendum if the party won a Scottish election. This may be a smart move in the longer term, but it worries some in the SNP who may yet cause trouble for Mr Salmond, particularly if the party does badly in the next Westminster elections.

Coalition complications

Nevertheless, the Scottish executive does have some problems. Under the coalition deal which Labour's 55 members of the Parliament agreed on with the 17 Liberal Democrats, Jim Wallace, a Lib Dem, will take over as first minister while Mr Dewar is convalescing. The prospect is viewed with private enthusiasm by the Lib Dems, and a certain stoicism by Labour MSPs. But a Labour-dominated government headed by a Liberal Democrat may put the coalition under some strain.

However, the first year of office has seen the Lib Dems mature far faster than expected, transforming themselves from a group of individualists tending towards uncontrollable anarchy to a recognisably coherent and even purposeful parliamentary group. In contrast, the Labour group has become increasingly fractious and rebellious, a discord which is in danger of intensifying with Mr Dewar's incapacity.

A year ago three of the Lib Dem group voted against joining the coalition. Now, says Mike Rumbles, a Lib Dem MSP who has publicly worried about his party's identity being overwhelmed by Labour, it is unlikely that there would be any votes against. One reason for this is that the coalition successfully steered past the rock on which it was expected to founder—student tuition fees. The Lib Dems wanted fees abolished; Labour did not, fearing that no fee income would mean fewer students. In fact, the eventual deal not only in effect abolished fees, but by some judicious tweaking of the Scottish budget found money to help more hard-up students go to university.

Moreover, the Lib Dem group can also point to other achievements. Mr Wallace is proposing a more liberal freedom of information bill than that offered by Jack Straw, the home secretary, south of the border. He is also working hard on plans to remove the mystique and patronage surrounding the appointment of judges through the introduction of an independent judicial appointments commission.

But no one expects Mr Wallace to use the temporary sidelining of Mr Dewar to push through a battery of Lib Dem measures. “I won't be throwing my weight around,” he says. His hands are in any case tied by the written coalition agreement between the parties, and by the fact that Labour has eight cabinet seats to the Lib Dems' two.

Nevertheless, difficulties may arise when the Scottish executive has to deal with the unexpected. In the first few months, Mr Wallace's touch appeared unsure when confronted by such events—for example, the court-ordered release, thanks to the discovery of a legal loophole, of a psychopathic killer from a state mental hospital. There will also be problems with the Labour parliamentary group. A fair number of them still do not much like the idea of co-operating with the Lib Dems and have shown resistance to Westminster-style whipping.

Last week, a private member's bill promoted by Tommy Sheridan, the Trotskyite Socialist MSP for Glasgow, came to the Parliament for first-stage approval. It aims to abolish warrant sales, a peculiarly Scottish system of debt recovery under which people, mainly the poor, have their possessions impounded and sold by court-appointed officials. Ministers argued that an alternative system needed to be set up, otherwise people could just ignore things like demands for council-tax payments.

Despite this evident problem, Labour MSPs who had debated the bill in three parliamentary committees ignored Mr Dewar's demand to junk the bill, voting to carry on with it and let the executive worry about alternative means of debt recovery. This showed, in complete contrast to the government's almost untrammelled power at Westminster, the more even balance between the powers of the Scottish executive and its Parliament, and the ability of backbenchers to make progress with private members' bills.

Both the opposition parties hope to capitalise on any Labour disarray, caused by elbowing for position among contenders to succeed the 62-year-old Mr Dewar. His retirement from politics at the next Scottish election in 2003 seems more likely, even if his heart operation is a complete success. Mr Dewar thinks there will not be much jockeying “for the cynical reason that it is too early”, but ambition is the hardest of vices for any politician to suppress.

However, hopes that the coalition can survive these tribulations have been bolstered by the fact that the two parties have learned to get along socially. After a pub get-together last month where MSPs staged a cabaret mocking themselves and their ministers, an emotional Jamie Stone, a Lib Dem MSP, struck a distinctively Scottish note as he declared boldly: “If we can get pissed together, we can do anything together.”